Agnico shaft first in years in the Cobalt silver camp

To develop what is probably the most significant and exciting silver discovery in the Cobalt area in 35 years, Agnico-Eagle Mines is putting down a 1,200-ft production shaft on its Langis project in Harris Twp., seven miles northeast of here. A $3.5-million job, it’s slated for completion by next May and will be the first new shaft seen in this famed old camp in 50 years.

The find itself is on ground it holds under a royalty lease from Langis Silver & Cobalt Mining, a company Agnico now controls and manages. But the shaft is being collared on Agnico ground, which has acquired rather extensive holdings in this new area extending six miles north-south and east-west for two miles.

How in heaven’s name did they ever find this apparently rich deposit, any mining man who visits the site must be asking? For it’s under rolling farm land masked with 100 ft or more of clay with no rock outcroppings whatsoever. And it’s a mile and a half from the old Langis main shaft, a former producer that yielded close to 10 million ounces of silver.

Fact is, this was picked up in a blind exploratory drill hole seeking geological information. After going through 100 ft of overburden and 250 ft of barren diabase, it entered the favorable Huronian sediments in which it picked up a good-looking silver vein that assayed 51.8 ozs across 5.1 ft.

Follow-up underground drilling involving 3,000-ft holes from a long crosscut returned even more encouraging results, including two deeper holes under that intersection and 500 ft on either side that returned 61.0 oz across 11.0 ft and 39.0 oz over 3l.0 ft respectively. “Silver occurs where you find it. Our dream is to find the key — and we think we are gettin g closer,” Brian Thorniley, chief geologist and assistant mine manager of Agnico’s silver division, who has been with this company for over 30 years, remarked to The Northern Miner. Pointing out that the Huronian formation is thicker here than in the Cobalt area proper, he feels that this new development could open up a whole new silver mining area which lies 15 miles from the heart of the camp. Drilling to date has confirmed these Huronian sediments striking for at least 3,000 ft and with a vertical extent of 850 ft, offering “an impressive potential for size.”

The actual shaft collaring and sinking is being done by the company’s own crews under shaft captain Real Brosseau, which have just completed deepening the Dumagami Mines’ shaft to 3,200 ft. And it was these same crews that put down a 1,500-ft shaft in jig time at Goldex Mines and the 4,000-ft shaft at its Telbel mine. These four shafts, incidentally, are all of exactly the same dimensions so that all equipment is interchangeable, which has proved a big cost-saving factor.

This newest one will be called the Penna shaft after the company’s president and managing director, Paul Penna, who has never lost his faith in the Cobalt silver camp where he is the dominant operator.

The company’s new Penn silver mill at Cobalt, which replaces the one destroyed by fire, is now operating well and close to its 300-ton capacity with a strong backlog of broken ore on hand. Right now 100% of the feed is being trucked in from the Langis. This ore is grading just over 12 oz to the ton from a 12,000-ton stockpile. It can’t be mixed with the company’s other ores because of the royalty arrangement.

But just as soon as this stockpile is cleaned up, mill feed will be drawn from the Beaver-Temiskaming mine which is close by the mill and where grade is higher. This will be followed by ore already stockpiled at its Castle mine at Gowganda which is of still better grade.